Category Archives: Internet Marketing

Brick and Mortar Tips for Online Stores: Part 6

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To wrap up or blog series on utilizing the values of brick and mortar retail in your online store, we are going to cover that basics of marketing your site the same way you would if you owned a storefront. Many people assume that they can simply purchase a website, get it online and then the customer will just flock there and start buying. These assumptions can lead people to failure when they do not properly market their sites or put time and money into hiring professionals to do so.

To build a successful website, marketing should be divided into two main groups. There is user-specific marketing to customers, which includes social media, e-mail marketing and original content on your site. This is important because it will build your credibility within the eyes of your customers and ensure return shopping. Marketing this way is building the image you will portray to your customers and potential shoppers. User-specific marketing has the main goal of being interactive and informative for your customers. It should include any information pages that a customer would use on your site, video clips, product reviews and any other unique content that makes the user experience on your site easier.

Then, there is the SEO/PPC marketing aspect. This marketing is in place to boost your search engine results, whether they are organic or paid. User-specific marketing is the trend in the industry right now and search engines seem to favor original content, however, to properly market your website your strategy needs to encompass both of these tactics. You want to develop a strong brand with your customers but you also need to be doing SEO and PPC marketing to reach out to new clients.

Brick and Mortar Tips for Online Stores: Part 5

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Next in our series we will go over the ways in which you can merchandise your online store to suit the needs of your customers and get their return business. Generally, retail stores change their visual merchandising once a month – sometimes more if there are specific promotions that they need to do a floor change for. This is helpful advice to online retailers, as your online store should also be re-merchandised on a regular basis.

Think of your brick and mortar store or the last time you visited a retail store. The products in the store are going to be organized and displayed in a manner that provokes the customer to shop and to buy. If it was a pet store, for example, there would be different areas for dogs and cats and fish set up so that customers would know to go to a specific part of the store to find what they are looking for. Your ecommerce site should also accomplish this by categorizing and organizing your products in a way that makes sense to you and your customers. You wouldn’t want someone to click on a link for dogs and end up with aquariums and hamster food.

Aside from organizing your products in a shopable manner, you’re going to want to update this merchandising on a regular basis. You don’t have to change your entire product arrangement every month, but you should be conscious of your featured products and specials. These things need to be updated so that customers get a sense of new and exciting offers and items when they visit your site. If you can keep a customer engaged when they come to your store, you can get their return business instead of a one-time shopper.

Brick and Mortar Tips for Online Stores: Part 3

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We hope you’ve enjoyed our series so far on utilizing tools from retail storefronts and bringing them to an online store. Halfway through our series, we want to direct you to two important parts of your site that should be well-written and very clear to your customers – your return policy and shipping policy.

 

The return policy is very important on a website because there is no salesperson present in your checkout process to reassure your customers about their purchases. If they can easily access and understand your return policy, it will be easier for them to purchase on-the-fence items knowing what the consequences will be if the item doesn’t work out.

The return policy should also enable you to protect yourself from any angry customers. It gives you the opportunity to build a policy that will allow you to reject unwelcomed returns. One major problem in the retail world is dealing with customers who abuse the system and expect to get their products at a discount or threaten to return them. By clearly posting your return policy, you will hopefully deter any of these falsified returns and have written documentation to protect yourself in a legal setting, should one arise.

It is also important to post your shipping policy for some of the same reasons. The shipping policy can help reassure customers who are on the edge about ordering from your website. If the customer better understands the order process and feels more comfortable with it, they are much more likely to impart with personal information through your ecommerce site.

Your shipping policy will also provide clear boundaries for yourself and you customers. Policies are in place to protect you and to protect the consumer, should there be a mishap with one of your orders. If you post your shipping policies effectively, you can help protect yourself from chargeback fraud. Part of your shipping policy should state what name will appear on a credit card statement when the customer purchases with you. This is another good measure to take in order to prevent and protect against chargebacks.

Brick and Mortar Tips for Online Stores: Part 2

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To continue with our series on applying brick and mortar ideas to your online store, this segment will cover how you can implement tools to make your online shoppers feel as though they have the same customer service that they would at your shop.

When you go to a retail store, one of the first things that will happen is a sales associate will greet you (hopefully in a friendly manner) and ask you what you are looking for or if you need help finding a specific item. The associate might also tell the customer what specials are going on or what products are currently on sale.

You can do several different things to achieve this same effect online, utilizing multiple features to recreate some of the convenience of having a sales associate to reference.

To assume the role of greeter for your web store, you can use bright banner images on your landing page to greet your customers. This will need to be friendly, informative and aesthetically interesting to engage your customers and get them to look further into your shop. Think about what you do when you visit a site for the first time. Do you give the site a chance to load fully and display all of its images? Do you read the full page before deciding to navigate further? Normally, you are going to have less than 10 seconds to get a customer hooked on your page. The landing page will serve as a greeter and hopefully will achieve this for your web store.

In addition to having great content on your landing page, having a chat feature is another wonderful way to engage your customers. A chat feature allows customer to interact with your support staff in an anonymous way (if they choose) that often times gives them a sense of security. It can help your customers who may have anxieties about talking on the phone with a sales rep as it is a digital interface.

Another tip to creating a great service element is having a properly functioning search bar. If a customer can search for a certain product within your site, it is a great tool for them in navigation. It’s almost like having a salesperson there who you can ask what isle you’ll find the product in. This feature should be user-friendly, adapting to misspellings and other factors of human error. Maybe you don’t carry a certain product online but you carry it in store. This tool should be used in the same way a sales person would be. If a customer asks for something that doesn’t exist in your store, can you offer suggestions like a salesperson would?

These simple steps, although they’ll probably take some programming work from your developers, will ensure that you don’t lose sight of customer service on your ecommerce site.

Brick and Mortar Tips for Online Stores: Part 1

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In this series, we will be examining the ways in which retail stores can help us to better optimize online stores. For those of you who already have a brick and mortar, these tips might seem familiar and will be easily implemented. Those who don’t have a storefront might have some trouble with a few concepts, but will ultimately see the value in applying these processes to online marketplaces.

First, let’s talk about window space in retail. When you are at a shopping center or walking down a main street, looking at the shops, the first thing that you’re going to notice is the shop’s windows. These windows stand as a snippet of what the store has to offer. The color stories, the placement, the signage – all of these things are designed to peak your curiosity and get you to come inside. Some stores might even place signage out on the sidewalk or have a greeter, handing out coupons or fliers outside the front door.

In correlation to your web store, the front shop windows are your homepage or landing page. This is the first thing that a customer sees of your store and you have less than 10 seconds to impress them and get them to stay on your page.

Thinking of a retail space, shops are consistently redoing their windows to keep current and interesting. If you passed a store several times and the windows were the same, you probably wouldn’t go in because there wouldn’t be anything new or noteworthy. The same is true of your front/landing page. These need to be changed constantly to keep customers returning.

To recap, treat your landing page like storefront windows – change it up, keep it current and make it interesting to draw in traffic and keep customers coming back for more.

eCommerce Fraud: Preparation and Prevention

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Fraud is common in retail, regardless of the interface used, but when it comes to the world of e-commerce, there is a greater risk of fraud for three main reasons.

First, and most important, is the fact that you are not handling the payment method. Think about it – if you walked into a gas station with a piece of paper that had all of the right credit card information on it, they still wouldn’t accept that as payment. You would need the physical card in your hand to use it. It’s different in the e-commerce arena. There is no way to be 100% certain that you are dealing with a real person or if they are using real information.

Second, you are not in charge of your merchandise throughout the entire transaction. At the gas station, the cashier decides when it is ok for you to pump the gas, but when someone is shopping online, you ship the order out in good faith, trusting your preventative measures and hoping that you didn’t just ship it out at a loss to your business.

Lastly, there are several different types of fraud that can occur in an e-commerce marketplace. You have to watch out for counterfeit credit cards and gift cards, but also you have to make sure that you aren’t being taken advantage of by chargeback fraud. The internet is a vast space that allows criminals to take unprepared shop owners by surprise.

So how can you take the proper measures and secure your site to the best of your abilities? There are actually quite a few ways that are simple and effective when it comes to preventing e-commerce fraud and fraudulent activities. Make sure that you have a procedure that you follow every time you get an order and keep it consistent. You should be checking the shipping and billing addresses and security codes or CVV2 codes on all orders. If the shipping address and billing address are different, call the customer to verify the order. These are two steps that can go a long way in preventing fraud. You can also check the email that was given with the order to see if it is from a free email site. If an order is large compared to your average dollar sale, you should be calling or emailing that customer to verify the order and be sure it was correct.

In the end, it is better to have called and double checked an order than to be at a loss. No customer who has legitimately placed an order is going to be mad at you for calling. It shows that you are offering the best customer service possible, because your costs go up if you are constantly losing money to fraud.

Responding to Negative Criticism on Social Media Pages

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When you start any social media page, you are opening yourself up to two-way communication between yourself and your audience. The public has the ability to share comments about your business with friends and others in that network. Eventually, no matter how hard you try to please everyone, there will be that one person who is incessant on posting negative things on your page. Don’t worry, this is not the end of the world. In fact, depending on how you handle this situation, you can turn a cranky customer into a lifelong shopper.

One thing that we see on corporate sites all the time is the bland, generic answer that is almost like the computer is talking, not a customer service or PR rep. Do not respond with a cookie cutter answer that is impersonal and – to be honest – mildly offensive to the consumer. The last thing you want to do when a customer gets upset is coddle them with a generic response. Imagine if you went into a brick and mortar store, upset about service, and the salesperson or store manager simple pulled out a cue card from behind the register and began reading a scripted prompt, asking you to call an 800 number or email the corporate offices. It would be a slap in the face.

If you are a professional in the public relations or internet marketing field and you are managing social media pages, you should be embarrassed if your company is responding this way. How hard is it to respond to the customer complaints on an individual level?

Doing this on Facebook or Twitter is especially damaging because now potential customers can track your conversations and decide if they like the way you handled the situation. In addition to that, the person who has complained can also share these comments with friends and respond to them in an unsavory manner. Don’t treat your customers this way. Send them personal messages and always assume that the customer is in the right – even if they aren’t. Responding with scripted answers makes your customers feel unimportant and will lose your company business.

Your Value Proposition

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For those of you who don’t know, a value proposition should be the X factor that sets your business apart from others just like it, giving your customers a reason to shop with you. It is the mission statement of your marketing campaign. Maybe you pride yourself on exceptional customer service or perhaps you sponsor a local shelter. Whatever your business may be, it is integral to find a value proposition that will stand as a platform for your marketing success.

Developing a strong value proposition for your business is easy, but it should be treated with care. Put some effort into deciding what your value proposition should be. Look at your company from every angle and choose something that will give you a unique quality within your industry.

After you have decided what your value prop is going to be, spend a little time writing it into a concise and fluid plan. Take time to do like most writers do – edit, re-edit and then edit some more. This could be the strategy that your internet marketing adapts for the next few years. It needs to be thoughtful, honest and striking. Having a well-shaped value prop will not only increase your brand image and customer loyalty, it will give the best chance at maximizing any marketing efforts from there on out.

Advertising: The Difference between Social Media and Social Spending

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It is agreed, unanimously by the marketing industry that it is important to develop social media pages. We have had many posts on branding and social media writing; however it is time to put a backbone in the newly formed organism that is your marketing strategy. It is well and good to post on your social media pages and to put time and effort into maintaining them. You should absolutely do this. But now that you’ve gotten used to being a Facebook or Twitter pro, it’s time to talk dollars and cents.

We all love that we can get free advertising through our networks of friends and followers, but there comes a time when you need to realize that a strong social presence needs to be accompanied by a strong ad presence on the web. If you aren’t using pay-per-click marketing tools, such as Google AdWords, its time. Brands spend thousands and millions of dollars on web marketing, knowing that you can’t rely solely on a social media presence to bring you sales. It’s all part of a cohesive marketing strategy and money needs to be put into online ads.

Consider how much you spend on a phonebook ad or a billboard. Those are both local, limited ad spaces, while the internet is infinite. Your marketing strategy should already have a budget in place for internet marketing alone, and if you haven’t given this any thought than it is past time to do so. There is a great opportunity to expand your brand, especially if you don’t have a brick and mortar location, through online marketing and advertising.